Category: Motor Skills

By Lisa Pecos

Whether a child is growing like a weed or fitting into the same size they did the previous season; parents can’t help but wonder if their child is growing normally. Let’s take a look at what’s normal and what isn’t throughout the stages of your child’s life.

Reflexes Babies Are Born with

Babies come into the world helpless and completely dependent on others to protect them and care for them. That much, we all know. But it turns out that newborns come equipped with a number of instincts — reflexes that will help insure a baby’s survival from the start, even before the infant has had a chance to learn how to do anything. Doctors test reflexes as a way to assess how well infants’ nervous systems are developing.

Most newborn reflexes start fading by the second month, and they’ve generally disappeared by the fourth month. Doctors caution that if baby reflexes continue beyond the fourth to sixth month, parents should tell that to their pediatrician, as it could possibly indicate that there is a neurologic concern.

As new parents, you and your spouse are beside yourselves with joy over your new baby. Everything about your newborn seems magical and thrilling. But some characteristics that are perfectly normal in newborns may perhaps make you wonder if they’re something that’s peculiar to your baby, and if you need to do anything about it.

Let’s review a number of characteristics that are common among newborns, to help you decide whether your baby is in the normal range, or you should consult your pediatrician.

Swimming Pool and Water Safety for Babies and Children

Swimming is the most popular summertime activity for children, according to the American Red Cross. But sadly, drowning is the leading cause of death for American children younger than 5. And according to emergency room doctors, children are more likely to drown in a backyard pool than in any other body of water.

A group might gather poolside for a party or other social event, but if no one is watching the children, it can result in tragic consequences. To avoid such needless danger, it is imperative that parents take necessary precautions whenever their children are in or near the water.

4-D Ultrasounds Show Fetuses of Mothers Who Smoke Make More Facial Movements

A study published in late March, 2015 showed that fetuses of mothers who smoke cigarettes during pregnancy had more facial and self-touching movements, such as opening their mouths, sucking their hands, grimacing, and touching their heads and eyes with their hands.

For many years, scientists have been trying to answer the question, Is a child’s intelligence inherited from its parents, or can the environment in which the child grows up determine intelligence? The old “nature vs. nurture” debate. A new study has found that “nature” may play the bigger part, when it comes to IQ.

A small group of universities from several countries, including three from the United States (Florida State University, University of Nebraska and Western Illinois University), collaborated on a study that found that genetics, and not parenting style, are linked to a child’s verbal intelligence: Verbal IQ is not the result of parental socialization, the study found.

With autism rates soaring at an alarming rate in the United States, medical researchers are looking for answers as to what causes this mysterious condition, both on an anatomical and physiologic level.

A study published online in late March, 2014 in the New England Journal of Medicine is adding weight to scientific belief that autism may start in the fetal or even the embryonic stage of child development.

A recent study from Canada found that full-term babies who spent time in the neonatal intensive care unit had a considerably higher risk of developing autism spectrum disorder (ASD); most of the babies who became autistic also developed other health complications.

Researchers from McGill University in Montreal reviewed the charts of 180 full-term babies born between 1992 and 2007, who had been in the NICU at Montreal Children’s Hospital. All the babies had a gestational age of 37 weeks or longer.